


a silhouette and nothing more

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Platonic Life Partners, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 12:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4060564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Your friend's lucky," Claire tells him. It doesn't seem that way to Matt. </p>
<p>He learns quickly that it's easier to break a man than to listen to one trying to be put back together.</p>
<p>Foggy however, is nothing if not determined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a silhouette and nothing more

 

“And   _then,_ ” Foggy’s story reaches its grand wavering crescendo as he gestures expressively with his hands, “Matt turns back round to that asshole  and raises an eyebrow, like, one single eyebrow raise,  an’ then, an’ then he says ‘I’m sorry, didn’t you realise I was blind’?”

Foggy cackles at the punchline and goes to down the last of his mixer, realising belatedly his glass is empty. He shrugs, his grin undefeated.

“I’ve heard all your stories before, man.” The barman is shaking his head, but he’s smiling. He at least found something funny, even if it was probably just Foggy, and not his killer college stories. “I tell them to my missus, and she tells me that that wastrel Nelson needs to learn some new ones.”

“Pfffh,” Foggy waves his hand, the edges of his vision gently blurring into a pleasing fuzz. It has been a calm night, the bar trickled down to empty, and Rico’s all ready to close up. “That’s because your wife is still harbouring an   _inexplicable_ anger from when I borrowed her nail varnish that one time.”

“It was her favourite. Anyway, she says you stole it.”

“We were _ten._ There is always more nail varnish in the world. She needs to move on.”

Rico snorts, stowing another glass away under the bar with a clink. “Tell that to her face. Trust me, that hatchet’s never getting buried.”

Foggy smiles back easily, because he knows that Teresa loves him really, if all those dinner invitations are anything to go by. Hell’s Kitchen’s kids are like that, he’s always known,  scrappy but full of heart.

“Speaking of your wife and her mood swings…” he starts, intending to eagerly as ask about upcoming child number three and to again insist that Franklin is a perfectly respectable name for a baby, when a draft of cool air invades  into the fuggy heat of the room, and the door groans open.

At first he thinks it might be Matt, having sent him a poorly spelt text inviting him down to join him at Rico’s. His friend must have been asleep, or parkouring off fire escapes or whatever he did in his spare time when he wasn’t being Manhattan’s answer to Batman.  It was just a group of men he doesn’t recognise, clearly looking to close the night up. His attention doesn’t stick on them for long, and it swings back to the pressing issue of his glass still being  an empty one. He should probably go home, he decides regretfully.

“Mr Franklin Nelson?”

The call of his name surprises him, but he nonetheless swings around from where he’s propped up at the bar, a greeting ready to tumble off his tongue, a _please, call me Foggy, everyone does._

The sight of the gun pointed at his face surprises him even more.

“Hey now!” he startles. He can’t take his eyes off it, as the barrel aims down to over his heart. He is suddenly, shockingly sober. “Whoa, take it easy.  Whatever you fellas think I’ve done, you’ve clearly got the wrong guy.”

The man holding the gun is wearing an understated navy suit. Clean shaven, big-city type. His friends seem a little rougher, black suited, impassive and looming behind him. Foggy’s mouth has gone dry. He wonders if he can try and go for the phone in his pocket, but quickly disregards it as a bad idea.

“I doubt it,” the man in the navy  suit says calmly. He clicks the safety off deliberately slowly, and Foggy swallows. The man smirks.  He gestures the barrel at Rico, who has frozen with his arms half raised behind the counter. “You. Out.”

Rico’s eyes widen,  flick from the new arrivals to Foggy.

“Get out of here, buddy,” Foggy says quietly. He doesn’t take his eyes off the end of the gun, doesn’t turn round.  He thinks of Rico’s two young ones who call him Mr Fog, and fiery Teresa all rounded up with baby number three. He forces himself to sound calm, for his voice to not break, because Rico _can’t_ stay here. “It’ll be ok. Go.”

The man in the navy clicks his tongue behind his teeth. He doesn’t look patient, and Foggy has no idea what’s happening, but it is  not worth Rico getting hurt over this.

 It’s clearly him they’re  after anyway.

“ _Go._ ” He hears the pleading note in his own voice.

He tries not to get out an audible sigh of relief as Rico unwillingly shuffles towards the exit. The man makes a  shooing motion with his other hand.

With a final, pained  look in Foggy’s direction, Rico leaves, and Foggy is alone.

“Mr Velsquez will most likely call the police,” the man in the navy says mildly as the door clicks shut. He lowers the gun, knocking the safety back on before stowing it away in the folds of his suit jacket. “I  wouldn’t worry though. I have people on the other end to waylay the call. We won’t be disturbed prematurely.”

Foggy is about to say that it’s not really this he’s worried about, but then there is a fist barrelling into his gut, courtesy of one of the black-suited men.

He makes cut-off moan and doubles over for a moment, trying to keep his balance by staggering back, his arms pin-wheeling. He twists uncomfortably, trying to put as much distance between him and  them as possible. _If he can get away, make for the door…_ Someone’s moved behind him, pushing him forward with a hard shove, playground tactics, and he’s halfway through an indignant “Hey!”, before there’s another fist, connecting a little to the left of the last one, and his legs want to buckle beneath him. A brutal hand twists in his head, another grabbing his wrist and winching his arm up behind his back until he gasps aloud, the combined hold forcing his head up and his body standing. Another fist, and the air’s knocked out of him, his whole chest  spasming, winded, and he’s coughing, trying to force his lungs to work.

“I feel I’ve got your attention now, yes?”

“You could have just bought me a drink, y’know,” Foggy wheezes. He’s bit the inside of his cheek and there’s the tang of blood in his mouth.  His body’s switched straight into fight-or-flight, but he’s got nowhere to run to.

The man smiles. The gesture is oddly bloodless.

“I’ve been doing some research about a mutual friend of ours,” the man in the understated suit says  carefully. “Your name came up more than once, and so I did some digging. It’s not hard to find out all there is to know about you, Mr Nelson. It all makes for some not terribly interesting reading. Youngest of five siblings, the only boy. Your bank account is laughably small, and the couple who run the takeaway on your block know you by name.” The grip on his arm tugs up, and Foggy  winces, tries to follow the motion by standing on his toes to relive the pressure on his shoulder. “And you know where to find the Daredevil.”

“I don’t know what you’re –” The rest of the sentence is shocked out of him as there is a wrenching sound and _pain_ and something moving wrong under his skin. He lets out a sobbing yell as he feels his left arm dropped to dangle uselessly at his side. Out of the corner of his eye, there is a bump in the skin where there shouldn’t be, and he sways with nausea. It is the hand in his hair that keeps him upright and nothing else.

All of a sudden, he’s desperately frightened.

This is not a fight he is going to win.

“I don’t like being _lied to,_ ” the man hisses, bringing his face up close to Foggy’s. The hand tugs harder, and his head is angling backwards, his neck exposed.  “I know that you know the Daredevil, and when your friend is not making a nuisance of himself by wrecking my business, he moonlights as a well-spoken lawyer in a cramped little office in a practice that barely earns enough to keep the lights on. So do not _lie to me_ , Mr Nelson.”

“Jus’ – Just what do you want?” Foggy tries to not sound scared and fails. Pain has reduced his thought processes to shorthand, and he thinks with a rag-and-bone terror _they know about Matt. Is he safe? Is Karen? Have they gone after her?_ There are tears risen unwillingly to his eyes that have nothing to do with the unforgiving grip on his scalp, the motionless dangle of his arm.

There is a brief considered pause.

“Do you believe in God, Franklin?” The non-sequitur confuses him.

“Pardon?”

There is a   _crack_ as a hand strikes across his cheek. Foggy’s head jolts back.

 “Answer the question.”

 “I-I don’t know,” he replies honestly.  He wants to. He wishes he could believe like Matt does, unapologetically and with the whole of himself,  with an assurance that goes beyond his understanding.  He’s not sure he believes in anything like that.  

“Your friend does. Proper Bible-bashing little Catholic.” Foggy wants to defend Matt, to say _come on now, that’s not fair._ Faith is so  important to Matt, and this man, this stranger who looks like he only believes in himself, is trying to cheapen it. But he says nothing, because Foggy’s in no position to defend anyone at the moment.  “So you’d think, being a good boy who knows his scripture, our Mr Murdock would know what happens to martyrs.”

A fist jabs into his chest, and Foggy makes a choked sound. Something crumples beneath the impact point.

“Tell me Franklin, do you believe in the Devil?”

_Yes,_ he thinks, and he must have coughed the word up aloud because there is a sharp laugh.

“That’s a pity,” the man in the navy says, stepping back, allowing his two friends to take his place.  “This could have been a whole lot easier otherwise.”

A fist connects hard into his left eye, and there is a rupture of pain as his neck snaps back, flashing colours and trailing sparks of disconnected light. The hand in his hair is moving, and then his head is slammed hard into the bar. There is the crunch of glass shattering on impact beneath him, and then there is _agony_ burning across one side of his face. He gags on a scream as his face is ground down hard, shards ripping, mangling up  into his skin.

His face is held down while something is pulled off the bar with a lazy drag.

“Want a drink?” a low mocking voice asks, and something cold and fizzing is being poured over his head. There is the sound of laughter, and then there is the smash of a half-empty bottle across his head, muffling his wail further as his face thuds again  into the unforgiving biting sensation of glass digging grooves into his face. There is a sticky wetness on his scalp, and he’s not sure if it’s the dredges of the alcohol dripping down his face and back,  or the blood welling up in his hair.

He’s dragged back, and he must have been pushed or he must have staggered because he glances hard off the corner of a table which collapses beneath him, his whole body jarring from the impact as he lands on his back. He cries out, trying to curl up on himself, and then hands are grabbing him, forcing him over onto his stomach. There is a weight pressing down on him, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening, can barely breathe from the pain, before he hears a tearing noise, and angles his head slightly to see that the man in the suit has straddled his back, cut through the sodden cloth of Foggy’s polo.

There is air cooling the sweat that’s damp on his skin. A sliver-thin sharpness balances between the centre of his shoulder blades.

 “When you next see your Mr Murdock,” the man grabs his hair again, dragging his head up so he can snarl into his ear, “I want him to know these are there.” Foggy’s head is slammed down so hard there are starbursts behind his eyes, and he whimpers.  “ I want you to tell him that each one is an operation _he_ ruined, a project _he_ took from me.” The point lingering over his skin digs in, slices down.  “I want him to know that I’m simply repaying him for what he cost me. I want him to know that _this –_ “ Another vicious dig-and-drag, and Foggy’s fingers scrabble against the  floor as he wails in pain, his legs kicking out wildly.  “This could have been avoided.”

It’s like neat trenches of fire are being gouged out of his skin. He’s not sure whether he’s screaming or crying. He struggles to remember anything beyond this. He doesn’t count each cut. This mind goes offline.

When the man has finished, he pushes his thumb hard into a particularly deep cut. Foggy definitely screams them. He’s breathless and crying soundlessly by the time the weight is lifted off him. His back feels feverish, damp, burning. His body is shivering and shell-shocked.

He wants Matt to be here. Matt would protect him, Matt would be stronger than this.

“Beg me to stop, Mr Nelson,” the man says. “I’ll stop if you beg me.”

“Please,” Foggy whispers,  his chest filled with shame.

“I can’t hear you.”

Foggy swallows down his humiliation. “Please,” he says again.

 The man laughs and doesn’t stop. Foggy didn’t think he would.

A heavy heel comes down on his outstretched fingers once, and then again. There is a snapping noise like it’s fall and he’s stepping on twigs, and everything goes blurry when the second time, the heel grinds his hand down. He thinks hysterically _at least I don’t write with that hand._

He’s barely thinking in words any more. There is a blocked, wheezing noise when he tries to inhale through his nose. It feels hot, swollen. He can’t open one eye, and the other one is struggling to focus.  He’s breathing in more blood than air, and he wonders if now he’ll pass out, prays for it like some kind of blessing.

He’s changed his mind. He’s suddenly glad Matt’s not here to see this. Undignified, pathetic,  frightened. He doesn’t have to pretend to be brave if it’s only himself he’s letting down.

_Oh God. I know we don’t talk much, but I can’t do this._

He thinks of Matt’s quiet murmuring with a hand touching the cross hanging from his neck. He tries to emulate the Lord’s Prayer, before he realises he only knows the first two lines. Something about this makes him sob harder.

“Stop,” he pleads when they turn him over onto his back, his words slurring, trying to speak through his tears. “Please, stop.”

“Not just yet,” a voice says. It sounds far away, like he’s hearing it from another room.

There is the wet soft noise that sounds like  a punctured airbag or squashed fruit before his body registers that something sharp has punched into his side. He gurgles on a scream. _Our Father, who art in Heaven…_ The sensation twists, like yanking at a loose tooth, and the world trembles dark before his eyes.

“We need you to listen carefully so you can deliver a message to your Devil.”

There is something being pushed down over his head, something spiked digging gouges out of his forehead. They adjust it with a tug, and white-hot agony tears through him, and he feels the skin part easily as it rips. There are slow rivulets of blood welling up, trailing from the scraped-out divots, down his forehead and collecting in his eyelashes. His body’s gone limp, any fight he may have had drained out of him.

Someone says something in a mocking tone, a laugh like a whip-strike and then there is something wet dribbling down his cheek. He realises with a numb detachment that one of the men has spat on him.

“Tell Mr Murdock that this is what happens to those who get in our way,” the man says again, and Foggy’s only coherent though over the harsh whine of his laboured breathing is a wordless understanding that whatever happens next, he will not be repeating one fucking word. “Tell him that if he doesn’t back off, next time he won’t even be able to recognise your body by the time we’ve finished.”

Foggy cries out with a hoarse, shattered sound when a foot is kicked into the weak hollows of his back. Another follows, thudding into his ribs, and then another. Another. Another. The world is reduced to the sound of meat being tenderized. He doesn’t feel like a person any more.

_I’m so sorry Matty,_ he thinks. Chokes his name out, and the word slides into a groan like it’s clotted in his throat.

_Our Father, who art… Oh God. Please. I want to live. Please._

A weight slams into his leg, and he can hear the snap of bone, the tear as it’s forced out through his skin. There are things breaking inside him that shouldn’t. The back of his throat is slick with blood, and he can’t swallow. The side of his face feels numb, mutilated. There is blood and spit dripping from his lips.

He is going to die here.

A foot kicks his head, once, twice.

He loses consciousness long before they stop.

**

It feels like Matt’s barely dropped his head onto his pillow and closed his eyes before the rattling buzz of his mobile rouses him. He blinks, tiredness making him sluggish, and for a moment wonders what woke him.

_Unknown Number. Unknown Number. Unknown Number._  His phone chimes at him. He groans.

Matt pats around on the bedside table before his fingers find the outline of his cell.

He answers with a sleep-thick “H’llo?”.

“Mr Murdock?” The voice is female, unfamiliar.    

“Yes.” Matt clears his throat, making a gesture towards sitting up. His body hates him for it, and he hisses in a disgruntled breath. He wonders what time it is. It was gone twelve when he finished reading through the Collini witness statements. “Speaking?”

“Mr Murdock, I’m calling from the Perelman Emergency Centre. I’m sorry for calling so early, but Franklin Nelson has been just admitted, and we’d like you come in. You are registered as his next-of-kin, along with his parents. We’re still trying to get a hold of them.”

“Next of kin – what?” Matt’s working through the blur of panic that’s clutched around his chest, kicking off his covers and pushing himself upright. He tries to process what’s just been said through the terror rising like bile in his throat.  “What is it? What’s happened?”

“It would be beneficial if you were here in person, rather than discussing it over the phone. We can further inform you about Franklin’s condition then.”

_His condition…?_ Foggy had said he was having an early night, maybe stopping round Rico’s for a catch-up.

“I-I’ll be there,” he stammers, and hangs up hurriedly.

He can’t get out of the door fast enough.

When he arrives at the Centre, flinging money at the taxi driver, hoping he’s given the right amount,  wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothes, no socks on his feet and his shoelaces haphazardly tied, he can barely get anyone to give him a straight answer. It’s not that anyone’s lying, it’s just that they don’t know, or, even worse, they don’t want to tell him.

They say phrases like _an altercation,_ and _acute traumatic injuries._ They say that the cops are taking a witness statement now, that they’ll let him know when they know more about what happened. All Matt can understand from this is that Foggy was attacked, and that he was outnumbered, and that he was alone.

Matt wasn’t there. _Why_ hadn’t he been there?

He sits down heavy on a waiting room chair, and nods absently, barely present, dredging up replies from the numbing shock in his brain when the conversation calls for it. No, he hadn’t seen Franklin since they said goodbye at the office yesterday. No, he doesn’t have another contact number for Franklin’s parents. No, he doesn’t think Franklin was involved in any sort of criminal activity.

_It’s Foggy,_ he would have snapped, if fear hadn’t drained him hollow, _no-one calls him Franklin._  

He barely  notices when they stop asking him questions, and one of the nurses presses a Styrofoam cup of water into his hands. He doesn’t notice they’re shaking until he wonders why the cup isn’t steady in his grip.

He checks his phone while he waits, and it reads out one missed text from Foggy, sent hours ago.

From the sound of it, he was happy, and tipsy, and having a good night. He was _safe._

So what happened?

Matt doesn’t know how long he sits there in the waiting room, clenching his hands into fists around his cane as the world drowns him. He can’t lose control, not _now,_ not when Foggy might need him, but his senses continue to narrow down to an echoing too-loud room two corridors down, barely even muffled by the distance.

_…Compounded tibia fracture… BP seventy-nine over forty-four and dropping…_

_Jesus, how we meant to get that off his head…?_

_One thing at a time… Signs of building intracranial pressure… twenty percent  mannitol, nurse._

_Penetration of the lower abdominal wall. Bring the light over here, will you?_

Matt hones in on Foggy’s heartbeat. It sounds like a moth trapped under glass. Thready, frantic.

He feels sick.

_He’s going into shock… Nurse, prepare for cardiac arrest…_

_Foggy,_ Matt thinks desperately. He tightens his grip so hard he nearly snaps his cane.   _Foggy. God no please._

By the time someone puts a tentative hand on his shoulder, Matt’s listened to Foggy die three times on the table. Has stopped breathing, hasn’t dared to, in the time it takes the doctors to drag him back, the whine and thump of the defibrillator sparking through him, the vicious smack of the force punching more bruises into his skin. Matt hears a rib fracture under the pressure. Things keep floundering, flailing inside of his friend’s body as his heart struggles to maintain a normal rhythm. 

Each time, it takes longer for them to get Foggy back.

Each time, Matt thinks he’s lost him.

“Matthew?” A shaky voice pulls him out of the overwhelming sound of ruined muscles struggling to beat time. His head jerks as he turns around, startled.

He smells an undercurrent of sturdy cooking woven into cotton, of stale coffee and talc and washing powder.

“Mrs Nelson?”

Matt’s voice sounds wrecked.

“I got here as quick as I could,” Foggy’s mother says, dropping down gracelessly in the chair next to him. He can sense the space she takes up, and it’s familiar enough to be almost calming. Her handbag lands with a dull thump next to her. Her car keys are still gripped in her hand, clacking against the other keyrings on the chain. “They said… Is he…?”

“He’s in surgery now,” he says, half-dazed. “They – they haven’t told me anything else.”

_I’ve just listened to your only son die, Mrs Nelson,_ he thinks, his mind deadened with the sound of shattered things. _You should hear how hard his body’s trying to keep him alive._

“Thomas is still on shift,” she says. Foggy’s dad must be doing a security shift at the haulage yard tonight. “I wasn’t sure whether to call him, just in case…”

She trails off.

_Where’s the ophthalmologist?_ He hears from that far-off room where his best friend’s body is struggling not to give out. _We need to get this done now before he loses that eye._

Matt fumbles around, puts an awkward hand on her knee. The fabric of her skirt is worn with too many washes, collecting snapped fibres and bobbles on the surface. Foggy’s shirts have the same sort of long-lived character to them.

“He’ll be ok, Mrs Nelson,” he reassures her, and he doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince. There is a machine breathing for Foggy, and the stench of blood and anaesthetic clogs in Matt’s throat. There is the sound of old ships creaking. Foggy _has_ to be ok.  “He’s too stubborn to be anything less.”

Mrs Nelson puts her hand over his, pats it gently. She has callouses on her palms softened by hand cream that carries the lingering hint of camomile.

“You’re a good boy, Matthew,” she says thickly. “Our Foggy always said so.”

Matt doesn’t know how to reply to that.

Mr Nelson hurries in around half-six, still wearing his work boots, the synthetic rustle of his waterproof jacket flapping as he rushes towards them. His footfalls are heavy, frantic. Matt is listening to the quiet popping sound of a needle pushing through Foggy’s flesh, the regular drag of thread aligning split edges of skin. He had sobbed aloud once, and Mrs Nelson had shushed him, wrapping him in a hug, and he couldn’t tell her that he could hear them drilling metal rods through marrow, forcing the snapped bone back under Foggy’s skin and pushing it into position.

 There doesn’t seem to be an end to what they need to fix.   

“How is he?” Mr Nelson says desperately. “Kath, love, tell me, he’s not…?”

He must see something on Mrs Nelson’s face because his voice breaks painfully, and he chokes out. “Thank God, thank God”. There is the sound of two bodies holding each other far too tightly and not close enough.

When Mr Nelson regains his composure, he claps a thick hand over Matt’s shoulders.

“Thanks for being here, Matthew,” he says. He sounds embarrassed at his outburst.

Matt turns his head to where he thinks Mr Nelson may be.

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he replies quietly, and the vague shape that is Foggy’s father nods. His hand clenches in solidarity into Matt’s shoulder.

They sit in the waiting room for hours more. A long night drifts into a long morning. Foggy’s heartbeat carries on.

**

Matt calls Karen at the office when Foggy gets out of surgery. She opens with a cheery where are you guys?  gently chastising him for his lateness. She’s bought them coffees on the way to work, and she says Foggy had promised yesterday to bring round some doughnuts – I’m sure he remembered that you only like the raspberry ones, that’s right yeah?  She says she’s printed out the Donnelly statements, that the court dates been set for the Collini case, and that she’s been looking and they _should_ be able to defend on a statute of limitations ground if it comes to it.

 It takes her a while to realise that Matt isn’t talking.

“Matt?” she says, throat suddenly tense. She’s stopped whatever she was doing when Matt called. “Matt, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t know what to tell her. He gets half-way through a sentence, and repeats, rephrases, terse and stitled. Words keep letting him down.

She asks him again, low, frightened.

“It’s Foggy,” he says finally. “He-he’s been in an accident.”

An accident doesn’t leave a man breathing through a tube. An accident doesn’t systematically break bones, or stab and twist a knife in someone’s side.

It wasn’t an accident. He knows this, as much as he knows anything at the moment.

It’s just Matt in the waiting room when she arrives. Foggy’s parents have already gone in to  the ICU. The doctor said that they’d cleaned the patient up, and that he was ready for visitors. The woman has washed her hands vigorously, but she’s missed some points further up her arm because Matt can still smell a coppery tang at the back of his throat. He tries not to, but he listens to the conversation as they walk away from him. _Induced coma,_ she tells Foggy’s parents. _Reducing brain swelling. Your son’s been badly hurt, but he’s a fighter Mrs Nelson._

_Foggy shouldn’t have to be fighting anyone,_ Matt thinks angrily.

Karen’s gestures are bird-wing flighty judging from the rustle of fabrics, the caress of her hair over her shoulders. She doesn’t know what to do with herself, and she fidgets with her hands, her nails, her jewellery. Twisting her rings around her fingers, fiddling with the delicate chain of her necklace. Her palms are sweaty as they both sit in the waiting room, and she keeps having to wipe them on her skirt.

“I don’t understand,” she says once. “Why would anyone hurt Foggy?”

Matt knows one reason. He prays he’s wrong, that it was just a random attack, a mugging gotten out of hand.

Rico Velsquez had told the police that four men came into the bar deliberately. That a man in a dark blue suit with blondish hair and a gun had addressed Foggy by name. When the nurses had gone through Foggy’s things after they had to cut him out of his clothes, his keys, wallet, subway pass, were all still there.

Matt doesn’t think he’s wrong.

When the Nelsons finally leave the ICU, Matt and Karen almost don’t get in. The nurse recommends no more visitors outside of family as he walks the Nelsons back to the waiting room. Mr Nelson is leaning heavily on his wife, sluggish footsteps like he’s barely aware of putting one foot in front of the other.

Matt listens to Mrs Nelson browbeat the man with a very firm insistence that Matt and Karen are _family_ , that they _will_ be allowed to see her son. Her voice is damp, but firm.

_There’s no two people that care more about my boy than those two sitting out there.  They’ve been waiting for hours.  You_ will _be letting them see my son._

Matt thinks with a small, crumpled, self- hating thought, _if I didn’t care about your son, he wouldn’t be here._

When the nurse rather curtly tells them they can go in, Mrs Nelson puts a hand on Matt’s arm as he moves to stand. Mr Nelson is saying softly _You must be Karen. Our Foggy’s always talking about you._ Karen’s throat is working loudly as she wraps her arms around Mr Nelson’s shoulders wordlessly.

“Foggy’s going to need you,” she says quietly. Her voice is roughened from crying. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but you’ve both been friends for so long and…”

“Whatever happens, I’ll be there,” Matt replies sincerely.  He’d swear it before a priest if he could.

Foggy is his best friend in the whole world. Matt had never thought he would deserve this unassuming man that means everything to him.

Yet still he’s failed him.

It must be bad, the sight that greets them.  Karen takes one look at the bed, and tries to muffle a punched-out sob behind her hands.

“Karen?” Matt asks faintly. “Karen, is it… how bad is it?” He’s not ashamed to recognise that he’s pleading. There is the beep-shussh of a respirator, the static buzz of electrical current being fed into the heart monitor. Foggy’s heartbeat is unwavering, but that doesn’t mean he’s ok. It doesn’t mean anything apart from he’s alive. “I can’t see him, you have to tell me. Karen?”

Karen just bursts into tears.

**

“Your friend’s lucky,” Claire quietly says from the corner of the high-dependency unit where Foggy’s bed’s been stowed. Matt had heard her coming from three wards away, but it doesn’t mean a muscle doesn’t jump in his jaw when she finally speaks. He’s still waiting for something louder to happen, something violent that he can understand, that he can deal with. Someone to come and try and finish the job. Matt’s hand itch for violence, because it’s easier to break a man than to listen to one trying to be put back together.  

He doesn’t know what to do with this peace-less waiting, so he sits in the chair by Foggy’s bed feeling like a strung-out accessory to his friend’s recovery. It’s been days. They’ve stopped administering the dose of barbiturates that they’d used to induce Foggy’s coma. The swelling in his brain has finally gone down, but there is still the mechanical sound of the ventilator breathing for him, tubes pushing filtered air down his windpipe and nose, the sounds of his lungs inflating.

Foggy still hasn’t woken up. 

“Doesn’t seem that way,” he replies. He tries deliver this line without sounding bitter. It doesn’t work. Because he  can’t stop himself from _feeling,_ from the weakness of actually caring for other people.

Being Foggy’s friend has never made him feel weak before.

“They do this to get to you?”

“Fog’s not the type to make enemies.” That’s as much of a yes as he can manage.

“You know who it was?”

“I will.”

It’s Daredevil that replies to that, not Matt. Daredevil has been busy, these last few days.  He has a lot of things he needs to know, and after a while people are eager enough to tell him. He questions without grace, without mercy. He’s no longer looking for  ways to  raze the world to ashes in the hope that something better will grow. He hits like it’s that night in the train-yard, that father with the little girl he wouldn’t leave alone, getting them on the ground and snarling as he lays into them, the thoughtless sound of force hitting meat. He hears the sound of Foggy’s respirator as he punches again, and again, his fists dripping with blood, loosening teeth and fracturing jaws.

Matt’s not sure when he stopped pretending that the darkness of his life didn’t touch him. That he didn’t enjoy this.

Matt couldn’t stop what happened to Foggy. Matt was sloppy, was weak, and the gang he had been steadily dismantling had gone on the aggressive. Matt hadn’t been expecting it, wasn’t ready for retaliation.

Daredevil will not make the same mistake.

“Give him my best, huh, when he wakes up?” Claire says quietly. Matt remembers that her and Foggy met once, while Matt had been bleeding out and delirious with pain. He always wondered if they’d spoken while he was unconscious. He’s never wanted to ask before. “And you – don’t destroy yourself over this. Foggy will be ok.”

That’s what Matt had always assumed. Foggy was _safe,_ and _constant,_ because nothing ever touched him.  Foggy with his too big heart and his too big soul, and with both of them revealed to be as vulnerable as everything else. 

Foggy _isn’t_ ok. Matt can’t pretend otherwise.

Four men walked into a bar and nearly tore his friend apart. There is no universe in which this could even remotely be fine.

“Claire…” Matt says, stopping her as she turns to leave him to his thoughts. He wets his lips. Allows the _beep-beep-beep_ of the monitor to fade through him. “The doctors – the doctors won’t tell me. What they did to him. And Karen, she… I don’t think she can bring herself to. They all think it’s making it easier on me, not being able to see how bad it is, but I can hear – ”. _The grind of sawn wood when he breathes. The faltering sucking of broken blood vessels. The scrape of gauze over healing skin._ He stops and breathes out loudly. “Claire – they tortured him. To get to me, to make me _notice._ I need to know what they did.”

“And what will you do with that information then?” Claire’s voice is unyielding.

Matt doesn’t answer.  Tonight feels like it’s gone on too long. He’s aching and stiff from sitting down, and he wants to shake Foggy, tell him to wake up, because he can’t stand the sound of the ventilator any more. He forfeited that right as soon as his best friend took one punch in his name.

There is a sigh.

“You won’t like what you hear.”

His fists clench. “I’m not meant to.”

Claire tells him. It’s brutally factual, compartmentalized into cause-and-effect. She goes on to describe likely outcomes, best-case scenerios, and the potential worst. When Matt prompts, she describes how the body on the bed looks, how the flesh has puffed up , reddened and swollen, how the bruises are purpling, the shape of them marring across washed-out  skin.

She visualises a body broken, and Matt forces himself to listen to the whole thing.

He doesn’t know when tears start trailing down his cheeks. He thinks it’s when she mentions, almost offhand, that they’ve had to shave Foggy’s hair to more easily remove the glass embedded in his scalp. It somehow feels like a greater violation than the shattered bones, the unending bruises.  Matt has never known Foggy with short hair. He can’t even imagine it.

(When Claire is gone, he will reach out with unsteady fingers and feel the short, scratchy up-shock of bristles against the palm of his hand. He will _hate_ it.)

Claire doesn’t comment that he’s crying. He’s more grateful than he could ever express.

“When they brought him in,” he starts falteringly. “They said something about his head. Not the glass, not the swelling and the ICP, something else?”

Claire’s breath hitches, a chink in the armour she’s walled up, and he thinks hollowly, desperately _has everything else not been enough that there needs to be something more?_ _._

 “Claire,” he insists. “What’s wrong with his head?”

“When they… when they found him,” Claire finally says. He can hear he trying to be delicate in a way she hasn’t for the whole time she’s been speaking. “There was… there was some barbed wire. Looped round on itself into a circle. It had been… They’d placed on his head, like some sort of… well…”

“Crown,” Matt says, with a cold horror freezing up his lungs. “A crown of thorns.”

_Oh God._

The hospital ward suddenly seems too small. There is not enough air. There is not enough anything.

It is only when Claire leaves and Matt murmurs _be back in a minute, buddy_ to his unmoving friend and slips round the back of the hospital that the anger swallows him whole. He kicks a bin over with an incoherent shout of rage, kicks it again viciously, hears it clatter and roll, the crunch of metal under his foot. He wants to punch something, to feel bones give under his hands, and it would take such a little push right at this moment to become the monster he’s always known he could be.

They made Foggy into a _martyr._

Another scream of fury, and all he can hear pounding in his ears is the grating rasp of Foggy’s lungs as a machine does his breathing for him, Karen’s tear-thick words as she talks softly to an unhearing Foggy, gently holding his bandaged hand.

He punches the plastic windows of the nearby smoking shelter so hard it cracks. His scream is wordless, ruined.

This was never meant to touch them. His life, what he does, who he is becoming. They were never meant to be a part of it.

After kicking the side of the smoking shelter a few more times, he realises that the distraught keening sound he can hear is coming from him. He’s crying the way children do, helplessly, the whole motion overwhelming him.

He crouches down, wailing, burying his face in his knees, and feels the grief consume him.

**

 It is a Tuesday. They take the tubes out of Foggy’s throat and nose, clearly satisfied that he’s able to breathe on his own. The nurse that tells him this sounds confident that he’ll wake up soon when his body’s ready for it, and Matt’s giddy with the news.  He visits as soon as the office closes for the night on Wednesday, barely a minute over five before he’s grabbed his coat and cane and is heading out the door, and when he gets to the ward they’ve moved Foggy to, he’s out of breath. He sits there, anxiously waiting for Foggy to be ready. He thrums his fingers on his knees, strains his hearing for any shift in Foggy’s breathing, his heart-rate. He can’t help but be disappointed when nothing changes.

He waits all evening.

 When the end of visiting hours arrives, and he leaves with a slow dejection to his steps,  he puts on his mask with a stillness he doesn’t quite feel and punches like each impact will mean Foggy will open his eyes, that he’ll be awake tomorrow,  like each one is his own salvation. He hunts his quarry like a man possessed, and crawls into bed around dawn, blood caked under his fingernails and  one step closer to the absolution he is craving.

The next day Foggy still doesn’t wake up.

Rinse. Cycle. Repeat.

It is Saturday. Rico visits again, shuffling into the ward with awkward steps, guilt still making his voice heavy. He brings a get-well-soon card that his children made, and Matt can feel the glitter and roughened glue marks as he props it on the bedside. Rico sits there for a while, and it’s not long before he’s getting angry at himself, saying _I shouldn’t have left him with those guys, it’s my fault,  I should have stayed._

Matt thinks viciously _yeah, you should._ He knows that’s not fair, and feels ashamed.

  _There wasn’t anything you could have done for him,_ he tells Rico instead. _They had a gun. They were stronger than both of you. You couldn’t have prevented this._ His own guilt drags sharp at the bottom of his ribs.

The flowers Karen brought in are slowly rotting pungent in their plastic vase. Matt asks Foggy, _how can you stand the smell? You don’t even like carnations. You always said they were roses that just weren’t trying hard enough._ Foggy doesn’t reply, but he will. He will.

It oddly becomes all very routine. Matt visits daily with scuffed knuckles and another name in his head that he’s learnt through breaking things. He will talk to Foggy about cases, and leave gaps in the conversation waiting for his friend to reply. He lights a new votive candle at the church, and prays the Consecration of the Sick to Mary until his knees are stiff and aching and his fingers are deadened of feeling from where he’s gripped his hands together hard enough to bruise. He mentally catalogues Foggy’s wounds before he falls asleep, exhausted and hollowed out,  so that when the time comes, he will know exactly how to recreate them in kind.

Foggy sleeps on.

**

When Foggy first wakes up, Matt is not there. The ward nurse tells him the good news when he arrives for his daily vigil. Matt’s heart stutters.

“Is he – Did he say anything?”

He hears the changes in air current indicating that she’s shaken her head. She doesn’t narrate her actions like Foggy would, and must realise, because she then awkwardly replies:

“No. Nothing. He wasn’t awake for very long. He mostly blinked. Random eye movements, that sort of thing. He probably wasn’t even fully conscious. I wouldn’t worry, he’ll get there in his own time.”

Foggy’s had all the time he needs, Matt thinks harshly, and then feels awful at himself. He’s doing a lot of that, these days.

He had wanted to be there, when Foggy woke up.

Matt sits in the chair by the bed with the leaning back and the coarse-weaved fabric for hours, willing Foggy to open his eyes again. He calls him a stubborn son of a bitch under his breath when he doesn’t, and Foggy’s fingers flutter with a gesture of motion, and Matt holds his breath. But Foggy doesn’t move for the rest of the night, and Matt doesn’t even try and pretend he’s not crushed when he leaves.

**

When Foggy finally wakes up properly, it is a weekend, and the office is closed.  Karen’s gone to go get them both coffee from the downstairs cafeteria, promising to bring back something sweet while she’s there, and Matt is dozing on the chair by the side of his bed. Last night had dragged on through the dawn and into sunrise. He’d hit another dead end and taken it out on someone’s face. He hasn’t been to bed. He’d lied, and told Karen he’d just been restless, and  that he’d slept poorly, he had dreams he didn’t remember. Matt remembers every one of his dreams. Recently, they’re all the same.

 Matt opens his eyes when he hears a pained intake of air. His mind immediately assumes that this is what he had known would happen, that someone’s dared to try again, and his muscles tense, he readies to stand. Another sharp gulping sound and a quiver on the monitor however, and _oh please, please be awake._

He’s quickly feeling  around on the bed to find his friend’s hand. His fingers stumble over bandaging, splints.

“Fog? Foggy, it’s me. It’s Matt.”

Another hoarse gulp of air. Foggy’s hand twitches under Matt’s.

“M’tt?”

His words are slurred, misshapen, ground out through a misused throat. It’s as though he’s half awake.

“It’s me Fog, I’m right here.”

“M’tt, what…?” He is slowly shifting his head judging by the stirring of fabric. He sounds confused, dazed. His heartrate is steadily climbing.

“You’re in the hospital,”  Matt says. “Do you – do you remember what happened?”

“Yeah,” Foggy croaks out after a while. Another elongated pause, the _thumpthumpthump_ of his heartrate blurring together. “Matt, what…?”

 “Try – try not to talk too much,” Matt says gently, even though he wants to hear nothing else. He’s been waiting to hear nothing else. He skims his thumb  over Foggy’s knuckles, avoiding his IV line. “They’ve had to… Your jaw is going to be swollen and a bit stiff for a while. You took a good few knocks.”

“Oh,” Foggy replies quietly. Again, he breathes like there’s something damned up in his throat. His heartrate isn’t slowing down, and it’s getting harder for Matt to concentrate on anything but that.

“Does it… are you in pain?” Matt asks, and then realises how stupid the question is.

Foggy huffs a quiet almost-laugh, but it sounds stricken.  “Only everywhere.”

Foggy’s panicking, trying to make a pretence of feeling calm.  Matt can hear it, the shallow breathing, the way he’s frowning by how it pulls at the stitches on his face,  but he doesn’t understand why. Foggy’s _safe_ now, he must know that. No-one’s going to touch him.

“Karen will be back soon,” Matt says quickly, trying to distract him.   “There’s a button round here somewhere, to call the nurse so they can come to shoot you up with the best morphine your health insurance gets you.”

“Sounds awesome,” Foggy says distractedly. He swallows loudly.

His heartbeat’s even louder. He makes that shift in breathing that indicates he wants to say something.

“Matty?” His voice is smaller, a trembling sliver of repressed fear. “Matt, why can’t I see?”

Matt stills. Prays he’s misheard.

“Pardon?”

Foggy carries on, his voice pitching higher, his half-formed words getting more frantic. “It’s dark, and my eyes are open and I can’t _see_ , Matt. Why can’t I see?”

It takes a moment for Matt to remember, before he realises: the bandages.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  No wonder Foggy was so frightened.

He remembers what it was like, that first time he woke up and there was nothing.

“No, no, shush, Foggy, it’s ok,” he says.  “You aren’t blind, you aren’t…. I’m sorry Fog, I forgot… there’s a bandage. Over your eyes. It’s temporary. You can still see.”

“A bandage?” Foggy repeats faintly.

“Yeah, it’s… y-you got hit really hard in the eye, and it – it detached the retina. They operated on it and it’s all fixed, but it means you’ll have to wear a patch a while. They put a  bandage over both initially so it wouldn’t be too much of a strain on your other eye as soon as you woke up.”

“Oh,” Foggy says again. “Right.” There is a long pause, and then he mumbles. “What sort of a dick punches someone in the eye?”

“You tell me.” Matt keeps his hand folded over Foggy’s, rubbing his thumb rhythmically over bare skin. It seems to calm Foggy, the contact, so he doesn’t let go.

“You better?” he asks.

“It’s a work in progress.”

_Thump-thump-thump,_ goes the valves in his chest.

“’M tired, buddy,” Foggy murmurs heavily after a few moments. “Mind if I tap out?”

“Go ahead,” Matt replies softly.

“You gonna get me some of that morphine you promised me?”

“Finest A-grade opiates.”

Foggy hums, and settles back against the pillow.

After a few moments, he murmurs, “You be here when I wake up?”

“Of course.”

When Foggy wakes up again, Matt can tell. His body tenses, lying stock still like he doesn’t dare move, muscles clenching and a tremor starting up under his skin. His heartbeat elevates again. Matt will touch his hand and say _I’m right here buddy,_ and Foggy will rasp back _you just can’t leave me alone, huh?_ It will take a few moments for him to calm down, but he does, lying there in the dark, the fingers he can still use hanging onto Matt’s sleeve.

This routine happens more than once.

**

Foggy thought it would be easier than this. Healing. It turns out his body doesn’t agree with him.

He tries not to let on, but he's tired all the time. He feels like a chalk outline half-washed away by the rain. Threadbare, stiff. Falling asleep mid evening and then restless and sleepless come the witching hour. 

He sees in too many four a.m’s, his head still caught up in the fringes of bad dreams. Starting at shadows, at the tap-tap footsteps of the ward nurses mapping out their rounds.  He keeps a sharpened pencil under his pillow, even though he can barely grip with one hand and they've still got the other arm in a sling.  He buries his head under the covers like a shroud over his face, breathing shallowly, wishing he was braver. There are noises in the night, normal, innocuous, and he’ll quake, terrified that the world will always be this dark, that he will always be this frightened.

He tells no-one this.

When he dreams, he dreams that Matt’s there, at that bar. Foggy can’t see him because he’s got blood in his eyes, but he can hear him. Struggling. Pleading. Crying. Foggy dreams of unimaginable pain, old hurts inflicted anew, but the reality twists, and the nightmare carries on. In his dream, they stretch out his hands out flat on the floor as he sobs, and steady nails over the pulse points in his wrist. A voice filled with violence says teasingly,  _do you renounce the Devil and all his works?_  Matt’s screaming Foggy’s name, incoherent with tears. Foggy feels tears run tracks through the blood on his face and says nothing.

Foggy wakes up when they drive the nails home. Blood pounding, he’ll fumble for the light,  and stare for a long time at the bruised, but untouched skin on his wrists.

_You’d think our Mr Murdock would know what happens to martyrs._

_That didn't happen_ , he thinks, angry at his own brain. _I've got enough to deal with without you inventing worse shit for me to deal with._

Matt asks him what he remembers of that night, tentatively, stumbling over his words, even though that he probably already managed to wheedle someone into reading the initial police report out to him with his whole butter-wouldn't-melt routine. Foggy tells him that it’s all a bit of a blur, that he doesn’t recall much. He changes the subject quickly. Matt hesitates but lets him begrudgingly.

Foggy remembers  a man in a navy suit telling him to beg, the shame curled hot and tight in his chest when he did. He remembers being told  to deliver a message to the Daredevil. He left that out of the police report. There’s a lot he did.

He gains a small amount of spiteful satisfaction by not telling Matt a goddamn thing. Not one line.

 It's not much, but it's enough.

He quickly tires of this whole stuck-in-bed bullshit, and rather than just lying there and feeling sorry for himself, jumping at noises (letting that asshole  _win_ ), he begins to set himself manageable challenges. Sit up in bed. Eat solid food and keep it down. He tries not to get  annoyed at himself when he loses concentration easily, or can't recall what someone told him five minutes ago, because these sorts of things are entirely understandable when some guys  played kick-about with his head. He makes an effort to talk to the nurses when they adjust his IV or sponge him down, bring out his best jokes and funny stories.  He can’t see what they look like, but there’s one nurse who sounds  _built_ , and flirting with that probably hot nurse who hopefully looks more like Ryan Gosling than Harvey Keitel becomes another one of his challenges.

After a few days, they adjust his bandages to only cover the eye they’d operated on, but he must have taken one fierce knock to the face because the skin around his other eye is puffy and sore, his eyelid swelled up, and he won't be able to open it until the bruising goes down. He can tell when it’s light, but not much else.

He's frustrated, of course he is, but when Matt mentions it, he says easily that it means he won't have to look at his law partner's dumbass face for another while, that he's counting it as a blessing.

_Matt's trying not to, but he's smirking at that,_ Karen narrates for him, and Matt mutters  _traitor_. Foggy then declares that now is a perfect time for Matt to teach him his mythical secret of how he can hear people are hot,  even though Foggy's hearing's not worth shit and Matt claims that it's more a lucky guess. The three of them end up giggling obnoxiously loud as

Foggy and Matt declare at random, _an eight! a three and a half! gotta be a seven at least with that walk; c’mon man, good legs are alone worth a five._ Karen describes exactly who they’ve just numerically objectified in cruel detail ( _Foggy, your seven has probably been in both world wars guessing his age_ ) and the conversation is happy, light-hearted, strays away from darker things.

Laughing hurts his ribs and strains his jaw, but it's getting easier. Foggy's good at making jokes, at forcing out the reality of the world to pretend that for a moment, everything is fine.

Laughing is easier than facing the night-time, but that's another one of Foggy's challenges.

He makes an appointment to see the psychologist specialising in trauma.  He carries on. He copes.

This is what he’s good at.

**

Foggy, you’re bleeding!” Karen exclaims as she glances up at her friend.

 “Hmm?” Foggy shifts awake, clearly having been half dozing, and his hand clumsily moves down to skim tentatively over the rumpled patch of gauze at his side. "Whassat?"

Karen’s not looking there. She stands up, putting her tablet down on the chair, and gently pushes Foggy up so his back is straighter and not pressed against the pillow,  trying not to jostle anything still tender, pulling down the neckline of his hospital gown to expose his upper back, the fabric covering it flecked with blood.

She sucks in a harsh breath.

"What are these?"  she asks him.   She runs her finger just above them, following the harsh shapes they make, the off-white closure strips carefully patterned over each ripped line.

 Someone did this purposefully, she realises. She feels sick with the knowledge.  

Foggy had told the cops that it was a random attack.  A bunch of guys looking for a fight that turned nasty.  _This_  - this looks deliberate. Malicious. Calculated. “They look – they look like  a _tally_ , Foggy.”

Foggy stiffens under her.

“Must have just rubbed them the wrong way,” he says quietly, avoiding the question. He doesn't motion to move away. “Don’t worry.”

"I do worry – that’s exactly what I’m doing, because you’re lying, Foggy. You _lied_ to the police. Those guys, they went after you on purpose, didn't they?"  Foggy remains silent. "This wasn't - this wasn't just some punks beating up on you in a bar, was it, this was deliberate. Foggy, tell me, please."

“No,” Foggy admits quietly. He takes a deep breath, sounding miserable. “No, they weren’t just ‘some guys’.”

“Did they want information?” she feels lightheaded with a sudden nausea. “Did they do this to make you talk?”

“No – no, they didn’t,” Foggy tries to reassure her, but nothing about this is reassuring. “They already knew what they needed to.”

“Then why did you lie, why did you tell the cops that…” Karen stops. Thinks about the sort of people who go around Hell’s Kitchen assaulting lawyers.  "Foggy, look, listen to me. I can help, alright. If you're in trouble, if... If you've got caught up in something that you can’t go to the cops about, if you’re being blackmailed or something,  we can figure this out..."

"Karen, it's nothing like that, honestly..."

"This clearly isn't nothing! You're in  _hospital_ , and you’ve _lied_ Foggy, to the police, to me, to _Matt._ If you’re in trouble, if you know something, if there's anything..."

"Karen," Foggy stops her. "There isn't... There isn't anything you can do. I'm not... I can't tell you Karen, and  I'm sorry, I really am, and I don’t want to lie to you but  I  _can’t_ let you or anyone else get involved in this. It’s too important."

"Is it worth it?" she says "The secret you're keeping?"

Foggy doesn't exactly look at her, but he directs his face somewhere off to her side.

"Yes," he says "It has to be."

"Even if next time they kill you for it?"

She knows she's being unfair. She knows, but this is _her friend._ He’s always been steadfast, constant. And now he’s in some sort of trouble that’s so much bigger than he is, and she can’t help him, and it _hurts her_ that he thinks he has to do this alone.

"There won't be a next time."

"But if there is _?"_

Foggy doesn't say anything. He looks so sad, so guilty, a stricken expression like it's physically hurting him having this argument with her.

“There won’t be,” he repeats. He's trying so hard to sound brave.

Her heart aches, full of hellfire and fury. Foggy was never meant to sound so hollow with the weight of things unsaid.

She's lost too many of her friends to not want to protect him.

Foggy doesn’t need her anger. Not right now. Not yet.

"Alright." She breaks the silence that’s been building. Fiddles with a strand of her hair, tucks it behind her ear.  "Alright. I’ll leave it be. For now. Just, remember I'm here for you, alright? You’re my friend, and whatever is it, whatever you need, if you ever need somewhere to stay, or someone to talk to...  I'm here for you.”

"Thank you." Foggy says. His voice sounds wet, choked up.

He says nothing for a brief moment. As though his mind is elsewhere, occupying darker places.

“Karen?”

“Yes?”

His voice is quieter. “How many are there?”

“Seven.” She counts each one carefully, noting the reddened flesh, the beads of blood welled up that are already beginning to scab over.

Foggy nods, but doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Karen?” he says again.

“Yes?”

“Do me a favour?” He sounds so serious, so careful, and it doesn’t suit him. It makes something twist ugly in her stomach. The world is dark, she  _knows_ this. This shouldn't surprise her.

It always felt Foggy was apart from that somehow.

“Anything.”

Foggy wets his lips. Shifts his weight.

“Don’t tell Matt? About the marks, don't tell him.”

Again that urge to  _know,_ to  _understand_ rises up heavy in her throat _._ She quashes it. Foggy needs this, she tells herself.  This isn’t about her. He’ll answer her when he’s ready or even not at all. She will be there for him, if nothing else.

She doesn’t understand, she can’t, but that has to be the way it is.

“Sure, Foggy," she promises softly. "It’ll be our secret.”

**

Two shattered ribs and a crushed windpipe later, and Daredevil has his four names. He repeats them, like a promise.

They know he’s coming now. They’ve gone underground, their empire in tatters,  hoping to evade the Devil's wrath.

It'll only be a matter of time before he finds them.

 

**

Matt,” Foggy murmurs sleepily one day. “You know I can hear you brooding, right?”

A short-lived smile crinkles up the corners of Matt’s mouth before it flickers out.

“I highly doubt that,” he says instead, forcing himself to sound agreeable. He’s getting very good at that.

He had been thinking about martyrs. About men of faith who died violently, bloody and alone. It had not been a happy train of thought.

A whoosh of misplaced air and a dismissive 'pffsh' sound.  Foggy must have waved a lazy hand in disagreement.

“Whatever, man. I’ve got freaky ninja powers now too. Gotta use them before the bruising goes down and my eyes start getting reintroduced to the sight of your face. A man’s gotta have a couple of days to ready himself for that.”

“You saying I’m not pretty, Nelson?”

“Your level of pretty is kind of a bit off-putting, to be honest. It’s aggressively attractive. Me, I go for the old it-grows-on-you type of attractive. Play the long game.”

Matt can't help but huff a laugh then, and it’s almost like it was before, except not quite.

He had missed Foggy’s quick-spark banter. His undercurrent of jokes and easy teasing. He had missed a lot of things while Foggy was asleep, and now he has them back, and he’s more grateful than he knows how to express. He shouldn’t even be questioning it.

Foggy’s different than before, and it’s enough for Matt not to be used to it yet. There is no whisper of hair rustling on his shoulders when he turns his head. There is no miasma of coffee, or fabric softener, or spicy food that clings to his skin,  overpowered by disinfectant and the sickly tang of morphine.  When he moves, it’s more measured, mindful of injuries only half-healed, and the rhythm is completely unlike his former graceless motions, comfortable and assured.

He’ll say _I’m fine_ or one of its hundred other variants, and he will be lying.

Every time he says it, Matt feels like he’s going to snap.

 “C’mon then,” Foggy wheedles. “Tell your ol’ pal what’s eating you.”

Matt tries. He really does, but the words stick in his throat. His resolve turned skittish. He opens his mouth to speak, and he doesn’t know where to start.

He wants to tell Foggy how he doesn’t understand. How he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and how he’s tired of it, tired of being tired, and still Foggy isn’t angry at him. He knows Foggy wouldn’t blame him, because he might not like what Matt does but he understands, he knows the risks and he stayed anyway, but that reality is tangible now. He’s got scars on his body now that match Matt’s, and _still_ he says Matt’s name with a simple affection, a happy sound in his chest of things being as they should, when Matt doesn’t _want_ that. He wants Foggy  to  accuse him of not keeping him safe, of not being careful enough, because this is what he deserves, because this is true.  

He wants to tell Foggy he doesn’t deserve the kind of faith Foggy bestows in him. He never has. He’s never asked for any of that, and yet here Foggy is, just _believing_ in him with the sort of unconditional faith that’s usually reserved for carved likenesses and holy relics. The sort of faith that will get him killed one day.

“Matt?” Foggy prompts quietly. All trace of his joking has slid away.

“I’m sorry, Foggy,” Matt replies stiffly after a moment. “I should have been more careful, and I wasn’t, and I’m –  God I’m _so_ sorry you had to suffer for it.”

_I was so sure I could keep you safe,_ he does not say.  _I don’t know how they found out about you.  I should have tried harder._

_This was never meant to be your war._

“Hey, I’m indestructible, pal,” Foggy replies soothingly. “I’ll be back to normal in no time. No worries.” He sounds like he’s trying to smile reassuringly, and of course he is, because that’s what Foggy does. He hears someone unhappy and tries to make them not by tactfully redirecting the subject or distracting them, or a hundred other diversions that would be fine if it wasn’t _this._

_I’m fine,_ Foggy is lying again, and something frays. Snaps.

Matt’s suddenly _furious_.

“ _Stop it_ ,” he hisses, and he hears Foggy jump, freeze. “Stop lying to me, stop _saying that_ , stop making out that you’re fine when there’s nothing about this that’s… In the name of – Foggy, you  _died._ They tortured you, an-and  _broke_ you just so they could make a point, and then you _died,_ and now you’re here but you so very nearly weren’t. S-so don’t say you’re fine, when you’re not. Don’t joke about this whole thing like it was just something that happened, like you’ll add it to the list and it’ll become another one of your… your _goddamn_ stories… "

"C’mon Matt, now that's not fair…"

"No, no it’s not. It’s not fair. This whole thing, it isn’t fair. I realised that when four men almost beat you to death. Because you were my friend. Because I wasn't careful enough. And I’m sick of listening to you lie, and waiting for you to be mad at me, because you should be. But instead you sit here, and you joke, and you pretend that I didn’t almost have to bury you, and you say you’re fine, you keep repeating that, and every time it’s a lie, Foggy, it’s a…”

 “I have to, don’t I?” Foggy snaps at him, and the sound is a surprise. Foggy’s anger has always been more slow-burn, less flash-in-the-pan than Matt’s. He’ll gesticulate and stress his words, and his temper will build steadily, but it’s always more frustration than fury. It doesn’t come easily to him like it does Matt.

Foggy must be able to tell that Matt’s opening his mouth to speak again  because he carries on with a vicious intensity, not letting him interrupt. “Matt, no,  _shut the fuck up_  and listen. Just  _listen_ to me, alright.  I am  _not_ fine, ok?  Not even a little bit. I’m lying here, and  I feel  _helpless_ and weak,and I’m so tired of being scared _all the time_. I’m sorry that this happened too, hell, no-one regrets it more than me, but there is  _nothing_ either of us can do about it.”

He pauses, stutters. “I’m not – I’m not like you, Matt. I can’t take punches or knife-wounds and just keep going. I couldn’t fight them off, I wasn’t _strong_ enough, or-or _fast_ enough, and I sure as hell wasn’t brave enough. This, this isn’t my world, it’s yours.   But this wasn't your fault, _no_ , don't you _dare_ interrupt me. _This wasn't your fault._ Would it have happened if I didn't know you, well, no,  maybe not. But it happened, and it _hurt_ and I'm not OK, not even a little bit, but  _you didn't do that to me._ And I need you to help me, because it is sohard to pretend everything’s alright, because I can barely move without being reminded of what they broke,  and I can't see, and I can’t sleep, and my head is cold because they had to cut off my  _hair,_   but that’s what I’m going to fucking do. I’m going to make shit jokes and pretend everything’s fine in the hope that one day it will be.  Because if I don’t then they’ve won, and then what’s the fucking point of trying  at all Matty?”

He breathes out  shakily. He sounds wretched, like he’s trying not to cry. 

 “I need you to be on my side in this. I need  _my friend._ By all means, go out and daredevil on the top of a roof or something, there’s plenty of space for guilt and recriminations there, but not here, you hear me? Not right now.”

It’s the most Foggy’s spoken since before the attack. The intensity of it leaves him breathless.

Matt's hardly breathed since he started speaking.

He wants to kick himself.

“Ok, Fog,” he says finally. Quietly, his voice cracking. “Ok. No more brooding.”

Foggy makes a sniffling sound, and Matt pretends not to hear it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Foggy sniffs again, composing himself. He sounds exhausted from speaking.

“We good?”

“We’re good.”

Foggy makes a fist as best he can with his working fingers and offers it out. Matt dutifully makes a fist and bumps them together solemnly.

When Foggy changes the subject with a weak joke, and a _so, have you tried those bagels from the new place Karen went to?_ _,_ Matt lets him. It’s not easy. Nothing important is.

One day, Foggy will say he’s fine and he’ll mean it. Matt just needs to be patient. Foggy needs him to be patient.

Matt’s never been able to refuse Foggy anything.

**

Daredevil finds the three men that nearly killed his best friend. A blue-fire rage blankets over him, burning cold and deep like frostbite. He doesn’t lash out, striking with an uncontrolled fury, or lose control, his mind gone white and his motions automatic. Stick would be proud, he thinks bitterly. Instead, he knocks them unconscious, carefully calculated blows designed to take them out and nothing more. He binds their hands and feet with the rope he brought with him for the purpose, tying knots just shy of cutting off their circulation. He gags two and leaves one able to talk. They're in an empty apartment building in one of the abandoned streets that punctuate the outskirts of Hell’s Kitchen. No-one’s lived on this block since the attack on New York, the buildings condemned and falling into a shadow-and-dust cloaked disrepair. No one will overhear them. No one will interrupt.

Daredevil frets and paces like a hungry ghost, impatient for them to wake up. His rage simmers down into tended embers. He’s waited this long, he tells himself. He can wait a little longer to get what he wants.

When they finally begin to wake up, struggling as they become more aware, he smiles. It is not a nice smile.

He tugs a knife from out of one of the suit pockets. Lays it on the ground carefully where he can find it again for later. The man he has left ungagged shifts backwards, clearly having seen it,  straining at his bonds with forceful tugs. His heartbeat jack-knifes. Sweat is already beginning to bead heavy on his brow, under his armpits.

Daredevil  _wants_ him to be afraid.

“You hurt a friend of mine,” he says by way of an introduction.  Speaking clearly, cut-glass calm. He wants them to remember this.  "You nearly killed him.”

“The fuck does it matter?” the man snarls. His voice is scared, but he’s decided bravado is the better course of action than cowering in fear.

The man is stupid.

The Devil smiles and it's full of teeth.

“It matters because you  _failed_ , _”_ Daredevil says, letting the darkness roll over him like a stormcloud. He clenches his fist, listening to the fabric over his knuckles creak and stretch. “I want you to tell your employer that. I want you to tell him that when I find him, and I  _will_  find him, that I will recreate every bruise, every scar, every broken bone in kind. An eye for an eye." He  leans over, his voice dropped down to a growl. "Tell him that this is what happens to people who hurt what is  _mine_.”

The Devil takes his due that night. He hits hard without holding back, grunting with the effort. Listening as bones shatter beneath his fists, the fire in his chest ablaze. His motions are wild, savage, unbroken. After a while, his arms ache, his knuckles numb. He keeps punching.

When all three are unconscious, he catches his breath before he takes hold of the knife. It’s hard to grip because his hands are so slippery with blood, but he manages. 

On the skin in between their shoulder blades, he carves three lines, one for each time Foggy's heart stopped on that operating table.  Then he calls an ambulance for them. He doesn't leave a name.

The worst thing he could do is let them live. So that is what he does.

**

Foggy!” Karen exclaims. She's only just arrived at the ward, a sticky paper bag of pastries held tight in one hand,  and already her blood pressure’s slipped up a notch. “You’ll put out your stitches! Get back into bed!”

Foggy lets out a frustrated  _ugh_ , and instead of replying and doing what he's toldhe continues to struggle towards his goal, swinging himself uncertainly to the edge of the bed by equal parts shuffling and pushing with his one unbound arm.

“Just…” he starts, puffing, and she sees with no small amount of alarm that there’s a clammy sheen of sweat across his reddened face. His expression is tight with pain. She wonders how long he’s been at this before they got there. “Just, let me do this, ok?”

“There’s no need for you to push yourself too hard,” Matt says, attempting to be the voice of reason in all of this. He lets go of Karen's  elbow and takes a step closer to Foggy.

Foggy wiggles closer to the side of the bed, and makes a stamped-out groan in the back of his throat as he clearly jars something not quite healed yet.  His face is dusted a bright pink with exertion. It’s not an attractive look on him.

“I know that,” he grinds out, not looking at either Karen or Matt and choosing instead to stare hard at the floor just next to his bed. “I need to know how bad it is. Where I need to build up from, how long my cinematic training montage is going to be in the film of my life, etc, etc.”

With another grunt, he’s propped himself at the edge of the bed. The scuffed white plastercast encasing his leg sticks out like the mast of a ship, while his bare foot on the other leg settles flat on the floor, his toes flexing.

“I’ve got to do this,” he says. He looks up at them intently, his jaw set  and not backing down. The swelling around one eye has gone down, the bruising faded to a sickening yellow flecked with mucky purple.  They’ve taken the patch off his other eye, and it takes a bit longer to for him to track with it, meaning it doesn't focus immediately on them.

Matt doesn’t move. He frowns behind his glasses, and for a moment, Karen wonders if he’ll refuse Foggy this.

“Here,” he says finally, passing his cane for Karen to take. "Keep an eye out for the nurses for me?"

“Sure,” Karen nods, taking the cane in the same hand as the bag with the pastries, and the plastic-bag stuffed with some case-notes Matt brought to go over with Foggy on the latter’s insistence (“I’m gonna go crazy just sitting here, pal. Give me work! Give me something to do other than admire the walls and how much I’m not looking forward to them taking my catheter out”).

Taking a few steps towards Foggy’s direction, Matt stops just shy of the bed. He takes off his jacket, and Foggy takes it off him and lays it neatly at the end of the bed, before Matt  holds out both his hands at arm’s length like he’s trying to initiate the world’s most awkward looking embrace.

“We’ll do this together,” Matt insists, laying out his terms. “Like Maverick and Goose, remember?”

Foggy raises an eyebrow at him. “Did you miss the whole bit where Goose is dead?”

“Then you’re already doing better than him right?” Matt makes a ‘come at me’ gesture with his hands. “On the count of three?”

 Foggy’s adam’s apple bobs nervously in his throat as he nods. They’ve taken his fingers out of splint, but Foggy clearly favours his thumb, fourth and fifth fingers when he reaches out and settles his grip on Matt’s arm. His other fingers follow, stiffer and crooking delicately.

“Let’s do this,” he says, and Matt inclines his head in a brief acknowledgement. Karen shifts her weight from one foot to the other, feeling nervously apprehensive. She glances round for any nurses but doesn’t see any making their rounds.

“Then three, two, one…”

Foggy pushes his body up off the bed in one motion, using the momentum to carry on upwards by tugging hard on Matt’s arm. Matt pulls at the same time, and Foggy smothers down a pained moan and a bitten-off _oh man that hurts_ , wheezing through it harshly as his weight steadies. He wavers on the ball of his feet, but then he’s  _standing,_  his body unsteady with the effort and knee nearly buckling from putting his whole weight  on one leg.  His knuckles have whitened as his fingers cling around Matt’s arm and he looks like he’s about to pass out, clenching his eyes shut determinately. Matt’s other arm has moved to hold him upright, wrapping around Foggy’s back to settle against the stitched gash in Foggy’s side covered by his hospital gown.

“See?” Foggy says faintly. “Wasn't so hard. I’ll be running a marathon within the week.”

“You doing alright?” Matt asks, low and quiet. He doesn’t move from Foggy’s side. If anything, he shifts their bodies closer together, taking on more of his weight.

“Sure thing, buddy.” Karen watches as Foggy sways, and she takes a few steps before she clusters around him on the other side, readjusting the balance.

“This is just like a night after Josie’s, huh?” she says lightly, and Foggy attempts to look put out.

“You guys have never had to walk me home like this before,” he says defensively.

“Nah, you’re usually a bit louder. Staggering and singing, that sort of thing.” Matt’s smirking.

“Objection, your honour. Hearsay and speculation.” Foggy makes an offended noise, and winces. His balance is wavering again.

“C’mon, let’s get you back to bed,” Karen says softly, and Foggy nods as they slowly manoeuvre him until he’s sat down heavily. Matt holds Foggy with a careful reverence, like he’s worried about hurting him, his gestures tender.

“I think someone’s earned this,” Karen says, rustling the paper bag and drawing out a bear claw  for Foggy, which he eagerly accepts with a happy sigh and a _have I ever told you I love you guys._ “Any reason why you decided to try to stand and do a lap of the wards in your hospital best?”

Foggy chews carefully on the almond flavoured pastry, and brushes crumbs off his lap before continuing.

“My smokin’ hot psychiatrist,” he says after his mouth is no longer full. “I told her I was getting a bit restless, she said that was a common response to extended hospital stays and that I should maybe try and set myself a target. She recommended having people around me if I was doing anything strenuous. Think she was just trying to get into my pants.”

“You think everyone’s trying to get into your pants,” Matt chides playfully.

“Tell me _one_ person who isn’t.” Foggy replies and Karen makes an undignified snort in response.

“You’ll be back on your feet before you know it,” she says. “You can prove your argument then.”

“We’ll call ahead,” Matt says. “Warn all the bars, Foggy Nelson, back out on the town, returning to his never-ending quest to pull successfully.”

Foggy pouts, but his expression is happy, appreciating the teasing.

 “I think facial scars can only improve my already impeccable skills, I’ll have you know,” he says, and Karen doesn’t realise that this was the wrong thing to say until Matt breathes in sharply.

“There are – there are scars?” He sounds shocked. Distant.

Foggy and Karen share a quick panicked look at each other which encompasses an entire whispered conversation of _I thought he knew? / How the hell would he know? He’s blind! / I thought you would have told him! / Since when does my face come up much in as a topic of discussion_?

Foggy recovers first.

“Maybe not,” Foggy’s backtracking quickly and obviously and Karen shoots him a look that says _smooth, Nelson_ which he returns with a _you think of something better._  “I got the finest stitching this place has to offer, even my tailor would be jealous, if I could, you know, afford a tailor. Probably heal up just fine, won’t even be any scars, in all likelihood, not even little ones, so I can’t try and pass myself off as a boxer, or a footballer, or whatever hot people are into.”

Foggy is lying through his teeth. The  marks  ground into his cheek have lost their careful stitches, the lines absorbed into his skin, but Karen can see that the torn up flesh is slow to heal and scarring. It’ll only be faint, but it will certainly be visible, scattering down from his cheek to the point on his jaw under his ear. He’ll carry them round for the rest of his life.

Matt looks distraught, and neither Karen nor Foggy know what to say.

“Can I…?” Matt’s already bringing his hand up, clearly intending on feeling out the damage himself.

 A careful hand stops him.

“No,” Foggy says firmly, and then, more softly. “No, Matt.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want your grubby little mitts all over my beautiful face, that’s why.” Foggy lowers Matt’s hand down with the gentlest of touches, holds it there for a moment. “Also, I don’t want this to be how you see me. I don’t want you to ruin whatever no-doubt stunning mental picture you have of me. I _will_ get better, and heal, and move on, and I don’t want you to define me by how I look right now, ok? You deserve better. _I_ deserve better.”

Matt’s jaw is tensing. He looks lost.

“I still think you look like a catch, Fog,” Karen says, thinking on her feet. Foggy seizes onto that.

“Yeah. You hear that? Karen still thinks I’m sexy, and as you know, this woman’s taste is impeccable. Can’t be all that bad then, right?”

Matt shakes his head dumbly.

“Now,” Foggy says, reaching out for the bag off Karen and nudging another flaky pastry into Matt’s hand. “We are going to stop talking about my frankly stunning face, and _you_ are going to eat this while Karen tells me all about our current clients because it’s become gradually clear she’s basically running our firm for us.”

“Bossy today, aren’t you?” Matt says after a moment,  taking the pastry, and Foggy’s scars stretch as he makes a pleased smile.

“I’m practicing for the ladies. I’m going to be the poster-boy for a strong yet emotionally sensitive man.”

Matt smiles at that. It’s small, quick-lived as smoke, but it’s honest.

It’s a start, Karen thinks, smiling too. It’s a start

**

You wanted my attention,” Daredevil says deadly soft as the man in the navy suit blinks blood out of his eyes. He presses a foot hard against his back when he tries to crawl away, putting a bit too much weight on the action. “You got it.”

“Oh God,” the man cries quietly. Daredevil takes his foot off his back, and crouches down on his hunches next to him. "I’m sorry – I’m… oh Christ,  please don’t kill me.”

“Did Foggy Nelson beg?” Daredevil grabs a handful of hair and leans down, hissing into his ear. The blood’s pumping loud in his head, and he forces himself to stay focused.  “Did you stop for him?” He leans closer, feeling the shaking man under his hands.

“You didn’t break him,” he growls.  “You went after him because you thought he was a weak spot, a way to get through to me, but he’s stronger than the both of us. Better than both of us. ”

He takes out his knife, balancing the weight of it in his hand before he sheathes it slowly into the man’s skin, in the same place when Foggy now has an identical mark. It won’t kill him, but it will hurt. It’s meant to. The man whimpers. Daredevil pauses before he twists the knife viciously, and the man chokes off a cry. That's alright. Daredevil had all night to listen to him scream.

 “Tell me,” he says, unconsciously repeating. “Do you believe in the Devil?”

**

Foggy’s giddy with excitement when they finally get round to  releasing him from the hospital.

 “Hey Matt!” He shouts behind him as Karen pushes him through the half-empty car lot. His enthusiasm is infectious, even when there’s a bump in the tarmac and he’s jostled unceremoniously in his seat. “Man, you should try this! I feel like royalty!”

“Your highness,” Karen teases as she  spins the chair in a sharp half-curve and one of the wheels gives an anxious wobble and a groan. Foggy makes a _neee-OWWW_ noise like he’s in a rally drive, and laughs delightedly. Karen drives him harder indulgently, wanting to hear him laugh again, joining in with his mad-rush racetrack commentary.

“Come on, Murdock!” Foggy calls out again over the rattle of the wheels.  “You should have a go, and push me around. I could be your trophy boyfriend. You know you want to be seen with this fine specimen of manhood.”

“I think people might be suspicious when they see a blind guy pushing a wheelchair,” Matt replies sardonically from behind them, swinging his cane out in front of him in a low aborted  arc. He feigns an aloofness that he hasn’t quite mastered.  Karen watches as Foggy keeps a careful eye on where Matt’s walking, and something fond bubbles up in her heart.

“Whatever man. You’re missing out.”

Karen yelps and giggles as she overestimates a turn, and the  chair nearly topples again. As it bounces back to stable ground, Foggy tries to one-handedly push himself forward, and ends up turning a wobbly circle instead.

“Why don’t they give you driving lessons with these?” he grumbles as Karen turns him the right way round, breathless with mirth. Matt’s caught up to them, and places his hand on the arm-rest.

“You won’t be in it long,” he says. “Just till your shoulder heals. You’ll get the best crutches in Hell’s Kitchen then.”

“Spoil my fun, why don’t you?” Foggy pretends to be upset and folds his arms in a huff. It’s awkward with the sling but he manages.

Matt turns his face towards Karen, and she sees the expression on his face as he tucks his cane under his arm. Supressing a chuckle, she moves out the way, and helps direct Matt’s hands to grip the handles.

“Well if you put it like that…” Matt says, grinning like the devil, and then he pushes _hard._

Foggy shrieks as they’re both propelled forward, Matt’s long legs running helter-skelter as the wheels clatter and jerk, and Karen near collapses with cackling at Foggy’s near-petrified expression.

“Matt! Matt! You’re going to drive us both into a car! Shit, Matt – the Volvo! The Volvo!”

Karen thinks she’s going to collapse with giggling as when Matt swerves the chair with ease to avoid the parked car and says loudly “I’m sorry, Fog, what was that?!” and makes over-the-top car-rally noises of his own.

Foggy swears blue and calls him an asshole. Matt and Karen carry on laughing.

**

Foggy forgets, for a long while, what it’s like not to ache constantly. He feels trampled down by his own expectancy, frustrated that this is taking so much longer than he would have thought. Weeks drip on into months, and his ribs still twinge when the weather drops cold, his shoulder still seizes when he tries to lift something too heavy. He still has bad dreams.

If there’s one thing however that he is, out of the many things he isn’t, it’s patient. Matt’s all for pushing headfirst, expansive gestures and grandstanding, _the defense rests, your honour_ with a cocky little bow, whereas Foggy’s strengths are in the groundwork. The long-haul nights and meticulous focus, practically slotting together the right evidence one puzzle piece at a time,  the foundations of a case built from the ground up.

That’s what this is, he tells himself. Groundwork.

He gets used to dragging around the weight of his plastered-up leg. Matt slows down for him when they go out together, and Foggy will adjust his gait so that Matt can hold his arm as they go, the blind leading the slow. He wakes up in the morning and doesn’t even think now when he reaches for his crutches, takes it in his stride when he has to rub hand-cream into the roughened callouses on his palms, or has to wrap his leg up with a trash bag and a rubber band so as not to get it wet when he showers. These are just things he has to do these days.

 The doctor can’t give him a straight answer on whether he’ll be able to walk the same again, but that’s not a problem he’s considering for now. He’ll reach that when the cast comes off. Whatever happens, he’ll deal with it.

He grits his teeth and goes to physio three times a week to rebuild the muscles around his shoulder. They push him, and he hates it, and it’s _hard,_ and every stretch makes him want to cry. Sometimes he does. Afterwards, he is drained but oddly lighter. He’ll force his body to do _just one more,_ and tell himself that not being able to do it  doesn’t make him weak, that he doesn’t need to be ashamed. He cannot win every fight, but no-one can. He just needs to take little steps, stumbling steps, and he’ll get there.

Afterwards he  buys some ice cream on the way back to the office, a strawberry pot for Karen, a vanilla for Matt, and his own flavour dependant on how well it’s gone. It’s an odd system, but it works, and ever so gradually, he’s buying more good-day-chocolate than bad-day-rum-and-raisin. He’s getting there.

In the yellowing light of his apartment bathroom, with the grown-in limescale on his bath-tap and a hairline fracture in the over-sink mirror, he charts his hair growing back with no small amount of eagerness. He’s got tufts curling over the curve of his ears now, and he thinks it makes him look younger. He’s still going to grow it back long, but there’ll be no harm to his ego if he gets ID’ed at any point. With a thoughtful expression, he pokes and prods at the indents of scattered scars across his cheek, traces the more obvious closures, the thin lines like stretch marks from his  cheekbone to his jaw. It’s put a dent in the adorkable look he’d been rocking for so many years, but Karen assures him chicks dig scars, and he amuses himself by thinking up the wildest stories to tell anyone who asks. Escaped zoo animals, previous career as a stuntman, foiling a robbery, the works, he’s going to try them all. He’ll get Matt involved, it’ll be hours of endless fun.

He fingers the small silvery marks delineated across his forehead, barely visible without looking closely. They will fade in time, he knows with satisfaction. He is more than a few scars. He is worth more than what they did to him.

He looks at the man in the fogged up mirror, with the scars on his face and the smudged rings under his eyes from bad dreams, and he thinks proudly, fiercely, _I’ll show you a fucking martyr._

**

Karen seems to think that through sheer force of will alone, Foggy will get back to his former self. It is a mantle she and the rest of Foggy’s family have taken upon themselves with a near ferocious sort of glee, a fine example of the bulldozer determination that the Nelsons, and clearly the Pages as well, are known for. They call it helping; Foggy calls it suffocating. But fondly. A glow in his chest.

The most prevalent concern appears to be that Foggy has wasted away while in hospital. Sure, he’d lost a couple of pounds, the round of his stomach a little flatter, his suits fitting a bit looser. With the amount of ice-cream and  pot-noodles he’s been getting through, he can’t see this being a state of affairs that lasts a long time. However, in the meeting they all clearly had in his absence, the consensus has been seemingly made that this is unacceptable. And while Foggy would have been perfectly happy regaining the weight gradually, Karen’s tactic is less careful mothering and more advanced warfare.

Not a day goes by without her  bringing snacks or candy to ply Foggy with at the office, until he’s half dazed with the sugar rush, his mouth tacky with sweetness and his stomach full with a pleasant buzz. His ribs ache, but in a nice way, not a still-healing way.  On weekends, she’ll pop by his flat, having somehow gained her own key, with yet another treasure from herself or from one of the Nelson clan.

“This is from Carla,” she will say, unwrapping a coffee bun gifted to him from one of his many cousins; or “Here’s a comic book from  Mateo” (“Graphic novel, Karen, it’s a _graphic novel._ ”); or “Esther sends along her kisses,” which Karen will then deliver with glee and an excessive puckering noise pressed his cheek, against which Foggy will attempt to pull away,moaning _aw geroff Karen_.  He will pout for a moment, mumbling something about how he doesn’t need another sister to boss him around, but his expression will be lighter, his voice without heat. He doesn’t mean it.

In amongst the regular flow of visitors – his parents, sisters, cousins, and the extended collection of honorary Nelsons – Brett pops by after work, still in his uniform, trudging with slow steps after a long day.

His gaze shifts to the marks on Foggy’s cheek, but he still puts up that half-annoyed front they’ve been carrying on with since they were kids.

 “My mom sent me round. She wants to know where her cigars are.”

“I treat that woman like gold and this is how she repays me?” Foggy says, moving to one side to invite Brett in over the threshold. “Now you’re here, fancy a beer?”

Brett huffs. “Ain’t you supposed to be loopy with painkillers or something?”

“Please, I could still drink you under the table.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it, hotshot.”

It’s a nice night. It’s slow and steady, and they talk about nothing in particular. They skirt away from darker topics, and talk instead about their city, their home for so many years.  Old friends who moved away, the run-down and boarded-up places where they used to play, the pranks they pulled on the kids the next block down. The shops that were no longer there anymore, and the new landmarks that have struggled up in their place. They clink their bottles together in a quiet solidarity, Hell’s Kitchen’s kids, big hearts underneath it all.

Brett gives him a tight one-armed hug when he goes to leave.

“Take care of yourself, kay man?”

“Don’t I always?” Foggy replies as he sees him out. He doesn’t feel like he’s lying that time.

Things carry on. On lazy weekends, Foggy will find his cupboard-sized flat occupied by two dorks who clearly don’t have their own homes to go to, and he’ll moan and complain but still go down to the key-cutters and make them their own copies of his housekeys. He starts to stock the coffee Matt likes, and keeps Karen from making it, citing a desire not to be poisoned in his own home.

 Karen will flop on his battered sofa  in her hoodie and channel-hop, occasionally getting up to hit the wide top of Foggy’s TV to steady the picture. At some point, if Foggy’s joined her on the sofa,  she’ll ruffle her fingers through his  hair and look satisfied. She always claims it’s nearly long enough for her to braid.

“Promises, promises,” Foggy will say, but he’ll smile, pleased.

Matt will sit in the squishy chair in the corner he’s claimed as his own since time immemorial, listening to something  with one headphone dangling out and knocking against his collar, or skim-reading some article with lazy fingers.

“You’re just letting her bully me like this,” Foggy whines when Karen pushes a full plate of food into his hands with an expression that reminds him too much of his mother. “I’m being smothered here, man.”

“Just eat your sandwiches like a good boy and maybe there’ll be ice cream for after,” Matt intones without even making the gesture of looking up, and then he jumps and  laughs aloud, shifting out of the way as Foggy tries to jab him with his crutch and misses.

“You suck, dude.”

“Is that the opinion of the jury, counsellor?”

“You’re an _ass_ , that’s the jury’s opinion.”

And everything is not perfect. There are bad days and good days, long nights without sleep and the time-scratched memory of old hurts playing out behind his eyes, the stretch of scars scattered across his body that  will never fade to nothing. But Foggy is breathing and complaining and laughing and alive, and all these things are not perfect, are not nearly enough, but  they’re just about as good as they can get.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a daredevilkink prompt asking for incredibly detailed Foggy torture, and an exploration of aftermath and comfort, particularly in terms of long-term injuries. 
> 
> Title taken from the song 'These Streets' by Bastille.


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